They had reportedly been working together on a film about Cantlie’s first abduction. Their taxi driver and Foley's translator were not taken, however. In September 2014, it was revealed Cantlie had been abducted a second time, along with American journalist James Foley. Second abduction Ĭantlie had not appeared in western print or on social media since late 2012, and the trial of one of his alleged captors collapsed in 2013, when he could not be summoned as a witness. His rifle clattered to the ground as his friends dragged his headless torso from the line of fire." To illustrate what the Syrian rebels were up against, Cantlie took a photograph looking down the barrel of an advancing T-72. Fist-sized pieces of shrapnel sliced through the air, decapitating one rebel immediately. In a feature in The Sunday Telegraph published 31 March, Cantlie wrote: "Then the tanks opened fire. In March 2012, he became the first Western photographer to witness first-hand an incursion by government ground troops into a city when T72 medium tanks rolled into the city of Saraquib in Idlib province and started shelling indiscriminately. This was Cantlie's second visit to Syria. On 9 October 2012, an individual suspected of being involved in the kidnap was arrested at Heathrow Airport, after arriving on a flight from Egypt. They were initially treated by a medic for The New York Times in Antakya before being debriefed by Turkish and then British intelligence. Both photographers claimed they were about to be handed over to a jihad unit affiliated with al-Qaeda for ransom when they were rescued. They had lost all their camera equipment, passports and clothes in the incident, and were smuggled back across the border at a crossing used primarily by Syrian refugees. Both photographers had to be assisted as their feet had been seriously injured when they tried to escape and neither could walk. The rebels came into the camp shooting their weapons and held at least one jihad fighter at gunpoint while Cantlie and Oerlemans were helped into a waiting vehicle. On 26 July 2012, one week after being kidnapped, they were rescued by four members of the Free Syrian Army. Oerlemans stated that it was unclear who held them, but the group of militants were of multiple ethnicities. They were taken back to the camp where a fighter who claimed to be an NHS doctor stabilised them and treated their wounds. Oerlemans then stated that "the British guys were the most vindictive of them all". In an account of the shooting, Cantlie said some of the British Muslims in the group repeatedly shouted, "die, kafir!". Oerlemans was shot in the left leg and Cantlie in the left arm during their escape attempt, Cantlie suffering ulnar nerve entrapment (loss of feeling and use of the hand) as a result. In an interview with The Sun newspaper on 26 August 2012, Cantlie said it was "every Englishman's duty to try and escape if captured." In an account in The Sunday Times on 5 August 2012, Cantlie described his experience. Along with Dutch photographer Jeroen Oerlemans, Cantlie was shot whilst trying to escape their captors. First abduction Ĭantlie was reportedly kidnapped by fighters while crossing illegally into Syria from Turkey on 19 July 2012, near Bab al-Hawa. Career Ĭantlie started his journalistic career in the early 1990s as a tester for Sega video-games. Ĭantlie's father Paul died on 16 October 2014, having released a video pleading for his son's release on his deathbed. His grandfather, Colonel Kenneth Cantlie, designed the China Railways KF locomotive, at 260 tons the largest locomotive of post-war China that remained in service until 1972. In 1896, he was instrumental in the protection of the Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen who might otherwise have been executed by the Qing dynasty secret service. John Henry Cantlie is the great grandson of Sir James Cantlie, a doctor who co-founded the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese in 1887 (later the University of Hong Kong). Ĭantlie's family held a memorial service for him in 2022. In January 2019, an official of the Syrian Democratic Forces stated Cantlie may still be alive inside Deir ez-Zor Governorate, Syria. In October 2017, a French ISIS fighter told French magazine Paris Match that he had seen Cantlie "seven or eight months ago" in Raqqa. In July 2017, reports surfaced in Iraqi media claiming Cantlie had been killed in an airstrike sometime during the battle of Mosul. He had previously been kidnapped in Syria alongside Dutch photographer Jeroen Oerlemans in July 2012, but was rescued a week later. He was kidnapped in Syria with James Foley in November 2012. John Henry Cantlie (born 7 November 1970) was a British war photographer and correspondent. Missing for 10 years, 3 months and 12 days
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